In a very few minutes the scow was in the rapids. But the current had carried her well inshore, where there chanced to be, for several miles, a comparatively free channel, few rocks, and no disastrous ledges. She swung and wallowed sickeningly, bumping so violently that once the colt's knees gave way beneath him and twice he was all but hurled overboard. And she took in great, sloshing crests of waves till she was half-full of water. But she was not built to sink, and her ribs were sound. For miles she pounded her terrible way in safety through the bewildering tumult. At last a long jutting promontory of rock started the current on a new slant, and she was swept staggering across to the other shore. Here, for nearly two miles, she slipped with astonishing good luck down a narrow, sluice-like lane of almost smooth water. As if to compensate for this fortune, however, she was suddenly caught by a violent cross-current, snatched out of the clearway, and swept heavily over a ledge. At the foot of this ledge she was fairly smothered for some seconds. The man clung obstinately to the gunwales; and the colt, by sheer good luck, fell in the scow instead of over the side. By the time he had struggled to his feet again the scow had righted herself, and darted into a wild chaos of rocks and sluices close by the shore. Here she caught on a boulder, tipped up till she was nearly on her gunwale, and pitched the little animal clear overboard.
As the clumsy craft swung loose the very next instant, the colt was dragged along in her wake, and would have ended his adventures then and there but for the readiness of the man. Forgetting for an instant his own terrible plight, he drew his knife and slashed the rope. Thus released, the colt got his head above water and made a valiant struggle toward the shore, which was now not five yards away.
All that he could do in the grip of that mad flood was, needless to say, very little, but it chanced to be enough, for it brought him within the grasp of a strong eddy. A moment later he was dashed violently into shoal water. As he fought to a footing he saw the scow wallowing away down the torrent. Then he found himself, he knew not how, on dry land. The falls roared behind him. They might, it seemed, rush up at any instant and clutch him again. Blind and sick with panic, he dashed into the woods, and went galloping and stumbling straight inland. At last he sank trembling in the deep grass of a little brookside meadow.
Being of sturdy stock, the brown colt soon recovered his wind. Then, feeling nervous in the loneliness of the woods and the deepening shadows, he snatched a few mouthfuls of grass and started to try and find his way home. Obeying some deep-seated instinct, he set his face aright, and pushed forward through the thick growths.
His progress, however, was slow. Among the trees the twilight was now gathering, and the dark places filled his young heart with vague but dreadful apprehensions, so that at every few steps he would stop and stare backward over his shoulder. Presently he came out upon another open glade, and cheered by the light, he followed this glade as long as it seemed to lead in the right direction. Once a wide-winged, noiseless shadow sailed over his head, and he shied with a loud snort of terror. He had never before seen an owl. And once he jumped back wildly, as a foraging mink rustled through the herbage just before him. But for all the alarms that kept his baby heart quivering, he pressed resolutely forward, longing for the comfort of his mother's flank, and the familiar stall in the barn above the ferry.
"HIS APPREHENSIVE EARS CAUGHT A CURIOUS SOUND."
As he reached the end of the glade his apprehensive ears caught a curious sound, a sort of dry rustling, which came from the fringe of the undergrowth. He halted, staring anxiously at the place the strange sound came from. Immediately before him was the prostrate and rotting trunk of an elm-tree, its roots hidden in the brushwood, its upper end projecting into the grass and weeds of the glade. As the colt stood wondering, a thickset, short-legged, grayish coloured animal, covered with long, bristling quills, emerged from the leafage and came crawling down the trunk toward him. It looked no larger than the black-and-white dog which the colt was accustomed to seeing about the farmyard, but its fierce little eyes and its formidable quills made him extremely nervous.
The porcupine came directly at him, with an ill-natured squeaking grunt. The colt backed away a foot or two, snorting, then held his ground. He had never yielded ground to the black-and-white dog. Why should he be afraid of this clumsy little creature? But when, at last, the porcupine drew so near that he could have touched it with his outstretched nose, instead of making any such great mistake as that he flung his head high in air, wheeled about, and lashed out furiously with his hinder hoofs. One hoof caught the porcupine fairly on the snout and sent it whirling end over end into the thicket, where it lay stretched out lifeless, as a feast for the first hungry prowler that might chance by. Not greatly elated by his victory, the magnitude of which he in no way realized, the colt plunged again into the woods and continued his journey.
By this time the sun had dropped completely behind the wooded hills, and here in the deep forest the dark seemed to come on all at once. The colt's fears now crowded upon him so thickly that he could hardly make any progress at all. He was kept busy staring this way and that, and particularly over his shoulders. A mass of shadow, denser than the rest,—a stump, a moss-grown boulder,—would seem to his frightened eyes a moving shape, just about to spring upon him. He would jump to one side, his baby heart pounding between his ribs, only to see another and huger shadow on the other side, and jump back again. The sudden scurrying of a wood-mouse over the dry spruce-needles made his knees tremble beneath him. At last, coming to two tall, straight-trunked saplings growing close together just before the perpendicular face of a great rock, he was vaguely reminded of the cow-stanchions near his mother's stall in the barn. To his quivering heart this was in some way a refuge, as compared with the terrible spaciousness of the forest. He could not make himself go any farther, but crowded up as close as possible against the friendly trees and waited.